When will talk of increased 'growth' be replaced by a more sensible conversation about increased systemic 'productivity' as a solution to our economic woes? Ponzi schemes, leveraging Peter to pay Paul (yearly bond issuances), and monetary slight of hands are often passed off as increased growth or a means to this end. Yet we all know, economists included, that a system dependent on infinite and accelerated growth is unstable and unsustainable. Productivity gains, on the other hand, when properly harnessed and distributed throughout society, can be more easily sustained and are harder to fabricate. It's time to remove the dogmatic lens and move in a new direction of economic considerations.

Whilst a portion of productivity can be achieved via technology and improved processes, a large part of productivity improvements simply come from making people work harder, longer, or not improving their terms of renumeration (i.e. using inflation to improve productivity). Whether increased productivity is desirable, other than necessary is questionable. I recently survived redundancy by accepting a larger workload for the same pay- I am now more productive to the company, my quality of life is poorer and surely that is the overall target of economics?

That's just the issues on the Federal level many issues of boomer theft were not even mentioned on the state and local levels. I am convinced that the boomer generation will be vilified for generation as the selfish generation.

What is this "Sponging" your article is talking about? As a Boomer who has spent the last 40 years paying into Social Security, I resent the implication that I may be getting something for nothing. That is simply false and your are wrong to suggest otherwise.
If you want to argue that Social Security has morphed into a welfare program that has benefited some non-contributors, then I can accept that as a fair argument, provided you show evidence to support your claims. But please, don't blame the victims (those of us that worked hard and contributed) for Governmental mismanagement. Social Security is a program that was designed as safety net for those retiring in such times as we exactly find ourselves in now.

What you are missing is the broader context. While many honest people paid into social security and deserve to be taken care of as they age, that isn't the over arching point of this article.
This is a generation raised by parents who lived through the depression. Their parents built a society with high social mobility, a high degree of income equality, and large safety nets after they learned the dangers of deregulated banks and "trickle down" nonsense. They invested in infrastructure, education, and goverment programs that benefited everyone.
At an early age, the boomers did nothing but gain from this. Free early education, cheap college education, and a system that graduated them into a high paying and protected job market. (not to mention clean air and water and safer food and drugs)
Then, as the booming generation hit it's earnings stride and started to gain clout in goverment, what did they do? Did they look around and say "Our parents invested in a system that provided us with fantastic opportunities. We should too"? No. They said "We don't like all these taxes inhibiting our personal success (which we have been raised to expect)." So they voted in Regan, Bush, and moderate democrats to deconstruct the system their parents put in place. Just so that it wouldn't cost them as much.
Now as they retire the only things that are untouchable when cutting goverment costs are things that retirees "deserve". Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. They refuse to be taxed or asked to work more to offset these expenses and instead push the problem into the future to fall in the lap of their children.
So when the author says "sponging", they are referring to the larger tendency for boomers to use their mass to smash the bottle that protected them and then try to soak up all the water while leaving nothing but a bloated, leaky, slightly odd smelling mess behind for their children to clean up.

Remarkably, many boomers are only insulted by the news that they took more than their share (see recent posts). The reality is unavoidable but try telling any Social Security or Medicare recipient that they didn't earn it. Those that are honest about it have tried to make up for it through private transfers to children.

What is needed is a discussion about what this truly means for young and old without the emotional, self-righteous indignation. Then, at least, we can begin to look for a solution.

"Those that are honest about it have tried to make up for it through private transfers to children."

And no wonder the estate tax became such a big issue when it did. I put it this way. The Greatest Generation wanted to build a better country for its children. Many of the best of members of the richest generations, in contrast, are desperate to assure a future for their own children, and only their own children, in a country they have diminished.

The Atlantic frames a debate between a 63-year-old who did quite well by his kids and a one of his offsping who is doing quite well. Unfortunately, that is NOT a representative sample!

Pure hogwash.....If the boomers are guilty of anything, it is of raising a generation of spoiled brats. I'm sorry, but I worked very hard throughout my life, lived modestly and raised a family which understands the difference between needs and wants. Many of today's kids want Large mansions, don't know what a used vehicle is and feel they are entitled to eat out every night. Yes the baby boomers are guilty (of pampering their children). GET A GRIP with reality......don't blame the boomers for the mess we're in (remember that this younger generation did not argue about taking the expensive trips to Disney World,diving around in their mom & dad's ATVs and boats and getting a huge down payment from mom and dad so they could buy that overpriced mansion they wanted (and incidentally, driving up the price of housing even more). I acknowledge that there is some truth in your theory, but PLEASE, don't label those of us who worked our buns off, tried to save and now get 1% ROI because the government decided to coddle this young generation.

"Many of today's kids want Large mansions, don't know what a used vehicle is and feel they are entitled to eat out every night."

That's an offensive and false generalization. I don't know what your representative sample here is, but most people I know my age (i.e. in our 20s) don't even consider home ownership to be a thing that is possible or even desirable in the medium term future. When we do buy houses, we buy smaller and closer to town than what boomers bought. An increasing number of us drive less or don't even own cars at all. The real estate and car industry numbers bear both of these points out.

Well that is absurd. I am the generation you speak of. I live beneath my means, do not own a home (though I can afford one just fine), and have not owned a car since I graduated college. The most expensive car I have ever owned was $2000, the last thing I want is a McMansion in the suburbs, and vacations with my family were rare and tame.

I think your generalizations may be a bit more accurate for Gen X, but Gen Y is as frugal as they come.

Sponging is word that invokes the image that someone has done nothing and now wants free access to everything. As a Boomer, we all saw how our parents and grandparents were dirt poor and struggled just to survive. As boomers we were a large enough force to influence ours and our children's outcomes in life. Boomers worked, paid taxes,saved for retirement and put programs in place with our tax dollars so when we did finish working we would not be destitute.
This Sponging is a term from someone who wants but not willing to work for it. We boomers influenced our out come as best we could, what are you going to do, other than complain.

The author laments the cost of health and retirement benefits for the baby-boom generation, but he or she also notes that “boomers easily top[ped] previous generations in income earned at every age.” That income growth didn’t just magically happen. Unless the editors of The Economist don’t believe in the neoclassical economic model that is the basis for 99.9% of the policy prescriptions that they tout in their magazine, the explanation for the income of the baby boomers exceeding that of every previous generation is that their productivity was higher than that of every previous generation. The article says these gains were “one-offs.” Perhaps the productivity of Gen X, Gen Y, and the Millenials will not grow as fast as that of the boomers, but if not, they will still benefit from the legacy of the boomers: an economy that is bigger and more productive than any in the history of human-kind.

Being a middle-class boomer born in 1944, I have NEVER paid taxes as low as 18% and even Mitt Romney, with all his tax loop holes is not in the 11% tax rate. My top salary six months ago when I retired was $88,000' which I considered close to a king's ransom compared to the rest of my country which placed me closer to the 28% tax bracket, especially since I don't have the tax write-offs of a multi-millionaire in Romney's class.
I now collect in retirement $2,300 a month minus $275 per month for medical insurance which is a pittance in the American world of health "care". I consider myself very blessed. However, I do not consider myself a moocher. I have been working since age 13, but have benefitted from an excellent public school education. Therefore I do not mind paying school taxes for good education and teachers and less for high paid do-nothing administrators.. But that's another matter.
The real matter in your very slanted and untrue column is that those who can afford and should pay to contribute proportionately to my country's well-being are those in the multi- million dollar categories who do pay only 11% to 15% of their wealth and in some cases NOTHING AT ALL!
During the Eisenhower administration the top tax rate was 90%. I don't think there was one person in that tax bracket that was ever financially broken or dragged down into the middle-class contributing to the well fare of their country. The real mooches of today are of the Mitt Romney, Donald Trump and other inheritors of wealth ilk, who never sweated at their jobs, only on their treadmills. Just like the Walmart fortune inheritors who, together own roughly the combined net worth of 40% of the bottom 33.2 million American families. I'm sure the Walton's worked very hard to earn their inheritance.
In the meantime, be cautious. Your job could be outsourced to a $13 per column "journalist" in order for a "non-mooching" low tax-paying millionaire to make even greater profits and pay even less taxes.

The ponzi scheme that is the financial economic system of the western world is unsustainable, and I and some others have known this for some time but the masses are I believe completely ignorant of this. Everyone seems to bank on perpetual economic growth (empirically impossible) fuelled by perpetual population growth (unsustainable) and perpetual government deficits (unsustainable) and assumes the availability of unlimited natural resources (impossible).

And lately, it seems that propping up the value of the assets of the rich through QE is more important than doing stuff for the poor.

All the post war generation is leaving us is a mountain of debt and an unsustainable financial-economic system. They feel they are 'entitled' but as I said lets not forget, its them that ran up the debt. They were the politicians in charge the last 20 years. The Chimpmeister and Obozo... nothing but debt debt debt debt.

Which nincompoop ever came up with the idea that you could generate permanent wealth with borrowed money?

And everywhere you see the Krugmans advocate borrowing more from our greatgrandchildren to fund some artificial 'growth' today. Utterly sociopathic.

What bears emphasizing in this article is that boomers are going to leave a huge debt to the new generation who won’t be able to repay.
In fact, the baby boomer generation is only thinking of its personal interest.
One may go as far as to say that they are not considering that unlike them, the new generation won’t have the same advantages as they used to have or still have.
According to me, maybe they should be more preoccupied about their heirs.On the same level, in order to reduce the gap between the generations, it would be good for everybody if some concessions were made.
However, I think that it is important to say that we can’t say that all boomers are wealthy. Indeed, some boomers have to work after retiring because they don’t have enought money to live.

Feudalism involved the forced transfer of wealth from the peasant class to the landowning aristocrats. The lords of the manor ran the system and used the coercive power of government to make sure they got their money good harvest or bad. Now we have a new group of feudal lords. An entitled class that taxes the underclass if ever their was one. They laze in the sun down in their gated Florida communities and collect their social security checks and their free health care. Meanwhile the younger folk work their fingers to the bone in the real world to pay the taxes that keep the checks rolling. This sort of system was never going to work once the number of retirees got big enough. For years and years the republican party kept telling everyone the democrat entitlement programs were all a Ponzi scheme but no one listened. They could see their parents getting a good deal and they thought it could go the same for them also. But there are now too many takers and too few makers. Sooner or later the younger generation, just like the medieval peasants before them, will rise up and overthrow the blood sucking entitled class. I don't know when it will happen but I would not count on collecting my full social security if I was in my early 50's..

Help me understand how inflation allows us to at least partially outrun out fiscal issues if Social Security and Medicare expenses are largely tied to wage and/or price inflation? It seems to me costs will escalate right along with inflation, leaving us no better of on a net basis.

The value of our debt will be reduced proportionate to the amount of inflation.

Using round numbers:

The U.S. owes $1000.

If massive inflation (the author wasn't suggesting this I am just using it to demonstrate the math) occurred and one dollar now buys what $.50 did before the inflation our the value of our debt is now 1/2 what it once was, because it is not pegged to inflation.

The people who have been borrowing over their skiis are less the baby boomers and more the next generation younger. When boomers bought their homes in the 80s to early 90s they put 20-25% down. The people who took out teaser rates with virtually no money down in the past decade were disproportionately younger. The people I know who are upside down on their mortgage or for that matter who have loans against their 401k's are ALL younger. Regarding deficit spending, the share of total government spending to GDP was about 32% in 1984 and is a bit over 35% now while tax revenues, adjusted for economic conditions, are about stable. The problem is tax "cuts" only if you believe govt isn't big enough. Regarding who should be taxed more vs less, that is an income, not an age issue. The private equity and hedge fund folks with low tax rates, the sports stars/ celebs, & .com types are primarily in their 30s to early 50s - Romney is more of an outlier.

"When boomers bought their homes in the 80s to early 90s they put 20-25% down. The people who took out teaser rates with virtually no money down in the past decade were disproportionately younger."
Would that it were so. One particularly damaging aspect of the housing bubble is that many now older members of Generation Greed, who should have paid off their houses long ago, instead borrowed against them and blew the proceeds.
That's the difference between this housing bubble and the one on the coasts in the mid-1980s. Far more devastating.

Entitlement of seniors is constant, while younger people,s wealth and job security is influx. Common sense will dictate the solution lies in cutting entitlement. But the sensors vote. No pols have the brass do to much about it. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.

US does have 1 card to play other countries such as Japan don't- immigration both legal and illegal.